


Carry Me Home

by excepttemptation



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Everyone's Drunk, Kissing, M/M, Post Break-up, is kissing cheating?, potential infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-07 13:20:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excepttemptation/pseuds/excepttemptation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles doesn’t begrudge Loki this particular turn of events.  Well, perhaps just a little, but he can’t fault Loki’s reasoning behind wanting to stay and enjoy the astronomically rare event that one of his good moods overlaps with one of Thor’s.  Nevertheless, however, it remains the reason he is attempting to prop up Loki’s boyfriend on the stumbling walk to Erik’s flat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, Fun, for the title.
> 
> Thank you, [spicedpiano](http://archiveofourown.org/users/spicedpiano/pseuds/spicedpiano), for the premise.

“I don’t think he’s going to be leaving anytime soon.”  Charles’s voice comes both condoling and apologetic, but for all its gentility, it still startles Erik.  That is to say, he glances over his shoulder, but Charles isn’t looking at him.  Charles is looking past him, the booths.    
  
Loki and Thor sit tucked into one-- Loki looking perfectly content to slump against his brother, and Thor seeming perfectly happy to let him as they trade quips about the other’s fashion sense and which one of them is prettier.  Their postures make it effortless for Thor to accent a punch line by tugging on Loki’s hair.  
  


Charles doesn’t begrudge Loki this particular turn of events.  Well, perhaps just a little, but he can’t fault Loki’s reasoning behind wanting to stay and enjoy the astronomically rare event that one of his good moods overlaps with one of Thor’s.  Nevertheless, however, it remains the reason he is attempting to prop up Loki's boyfriend on the stumbling walk to Erik's flat.  
  
“We really could have just taken a cab,” he says, for perhaps the second time that evening.  But Erik doesn’t respond and Charles doesn’t push, because more than he fears for their combined ability to make it to Erik’s before dawn, Charles fears what would be the Herculean task of getting Erik out of a cab and into bed, should Erik do something unhelpful, like pass out on the way there.

  
Couch, Charles amends as Erik leans a bit closer.  He’s going to put Erik on the couch.  
  
  
  
Suddenly, once they make their way through the front doors of the building, on their way through the lobby, Charles is angry all over again.  Angry with his parents for, each in their own way, teaching him that no matter how much you want or how hard you try, trying to keep close the people you love most only has them slipping further away.  Angry with Erik for pushing for more.  Angry with himself for being afraid of needing someone who might not need him back.  
  
He can’t hold it against Erik anymore, that Erik hadn’t fought for him.  Charles hadn’t fought for Erik, either.  
  
Charles wishes he had.  Wishes he’d never gone along with the break in the first place.  Wishes he’d called the next day and insist Erik tell him how stupid he was being over the whole thing.  But he hadn’t.  He hadn’t called, and Erik hadn’t called him.  And somewhere along the way, they both seemed to realise that their break had left them broken up.  
  
He hasn’t called Erik since before the ‘break.’  It’s ridiculous, how such basic realisations manage to elude him, when they feel so oppressively obvious by the time he notices them.  
  
From the way Erik says his name, it’s obvious that it’s been repeated a few times, at least.  Charles blinks at the open elevator doors, thinking that maybe someone should have called  him a cab.  He’s increasingly sure the he’s not anywhere near enough to sobriety to manage this.  But it’s just a quick--  short walk down the hall, and then he can go.  He can go home.  He’ll put his phone on silent and tell Thor that he must have just passed out and missed the call that’s no doubt coming in another couple of hours.  
  
Home, and bed, and waking up to his empty flat.  But before he’s allowed that reprieve, he has to get Erik over the threshold of his door.  Had Charles the faintest idea how to quantify his rather sub-par depth perception, he might have tried to estimate the distance.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for notes

The trek is easier, and quicker, than expected.

 _Darling, I think I left my keys at the bar, where are yours?_

Wrong couple, wrong flat. Wrong keys. Erik's key ring is simple, without ornament, and sparsely occupied. Charles manages to extract it from the pocket of Erik's worn leather jacket without fuss. Somewhere, in the lowest drawer of Charles’s desk, in Charles’s office in the Genetics Department, sit his copies of the keys to the flat he used to share with Erik.

“Loki--” Charles doesn’t know if Erik has just accidentally called _him_ Loki, or if Erik’s simply trying to ask after him, so he settles on taking it as what he thinks he can actually endure.

“He’ll be along soon, I’m sure,” he says, nudging the door politely open with his foot, but the tacit words are barely out of his mouth before Erik makes a scoffing sound.

“Not when they’re like this,” he fires back. It’s not entirely fair, that Erik can sound so sober and look so completely wrecked.

Erik’s smile is loose and his hair’s out of place, and it seems utterly indecent. He’s still upright, though with one arm slung around Charles’s shoulder and his other hand braced against a wall, Charles isn’t sure Erik could remain so if he slipped himself free. He should’ve just shoved Erik into a cab and tossed a few bills at the cabbie and have been done with it. But there it is again, something nervous in the back of his mind, the mental image of Erik not quite making it home. For all his internal huffing, there had never been an alternative to seeing Erik home himself.

But he’s done so. Somehow, they’re standing in Erik’s living room.

 _No, I suppose not._ It’s what Charles means to say. He’s even toying around with saying that he’ll call Erik in the morning, just to make sure his liver hasn’t evacuated his body in protest. It would be nice, he thinks, to be able to joke with Erik again. He misses that. He misses everything.

He misses the opportunity to keep track of how long he’s let the silence stretch out, fails to realise it’s gone stale.

“What’re you doing, Charles?” Erik’s gaze is narrowed - and the source far too close to comfortably ignore - but Charles tells himself not to fall for it, insists that he notice how glassy Erik's eyes are, how blurry their focus.

Charles does quite a lot by not doing anything at all.

Erik’s the only one who’s ever called him on it.

 _Go home_ , Charles tells himself.


	3. Chapter 3

_Go home._

Something must be wrong with Charles’s mouth, because when the words escape him, they sound much more like, “Are you happy? Does he make you happy?”

“‘Course. Why wouldn’t he?”

 _No reason._ Charles can’t get his tongue to move. _I’m glad_ \-- he’d probably choke on the words if even bothered to try. So Charles just nods, and avoids Erik’s eyes until he can’t anymore, until he’s pinned against the wall that divides the kitchen from the living room, pinned there by the far-too-solid presence of Erik’s body and the severity of Erik’s direct attention.

“Are _you_ happy? --are you happy, Charles?”

The words sting.

He should lie. Things with Thor are easy. Simple. Boring. He _should_ lie.

It wouldn’t be hard; string enough syllables together and Charles’s upbringing will make something socially palatable out them. Erik’s happy. Apparently. That’s worth preserving. That’s what love is, isn’t it? Putting someone else’s happiness above one’s own? Even if it’s excruciating?

Perhaps there’s a limit. Maybe there’s some fixed number of times anyone’s allowed to lie - to evade, to mislead, to downplay - to the person they love. There has to be, because Charles feels as though he’s run head-first into it.

“No.” He can’t keep the word in. It’s almost funny; the feeling of suffocation comes from a buildup of carbon monoxide in the lungs, and it’s a pressure than can be alleviated by exhaling far more efficiently than inhaling. “And I don’t think I will be for quite some time.”

Something flashes, too sharp and too keen, in the gauzy haze of Erik’s gaze. Erik should be far too drunk to look at him so clearly.


	4. Chapter 4

Charles had expected Erik to punch him.

He hadn’t realised kisses could hurt so much. 

It’s either the ache in his chest; he knows what this isn’t, what this won’t be-- it won’t be him chuckling, won’t be him pouring Erik into bed, won’t be half-started kisses and fumblings, won’t be waking up in the morning to threaten the substitution of tea for coffee until Erik’s hangover emerges through a low growl from a mound of turbulent blankets and pillows.

Erik always had thought it ridiculous, the number of pillows Charles likes to store on his bed.

There’s no bed now. There won’t be. It’s just the hard wall behind him, and Erik - too-warm, too-real, too-solid Erik - against him.

Charles’s hands take rough fists of Erik’s jacket, his lips a brutal sort of apology.

Charles thinks of Loki, fleetingly. He ought to care more. This should feel wrong and cruel and selfish.

“ _Charles_.” On Erik’s voice, it might be a curse. Whatever it is, it draws Charles back to the present, out of his mind, and sends him colliding into the reality that they’re _here_. That he’s kissing Erik, when he thought he never would, again. That ever stupid thing he’d been too afraid to let himself want is right fucking here and he’s been so stupid.

“ _Erik_ \--” Charles hates that it sounds as though he’s begging.

Even if he is.

His teeth turn sharp, and they dig into Erik’s lower lip.


	5. Chapter 5

Charles thinks he’s grateful for the fact that Erik’s taller.  That he’s drunk enough to let his body lean against Charles’s, keeping them both firmly against the wall; it keeps Charles from escalating things.  
  
They’ve got to stop, he knows that.  They will-- _he_ will.    
  
Just  
  
In just one more minute.  
  
One more minute of Erik’s teeth, of fingertips digging around his jaw as if he’s trying to leave bruises, of Erik- _Erik_ - ** _Erik_**.  
  
Charles is surprised, but not startled, to find his hand up the side of Erik’s shirt.  He thinks he’s the one making those soft, rough-edged sounds, except for the way it also feels like he’s drinking them down from Erik’s lips.  
  
It has to stop, Charles tells himself, again, or he’s going to forget himself.  He’s going to forget that they’re not together.  That Erik isn’t his, not anymore.  But for the first time in months, Charles doesn’t feel like quite such an idiot, and some desperate part of him is aching to recharge.  
  
His rebellious hips rock forward, and he doesn’t bother trying to tell himself that maybe Erik hasn’t noticed how hard he is.  Erik’s groan would have nipped that in the bud, anyway.  Charles feels like he’s being torn apart from the inside out--  and the worst of it, the worst of everything, is that Erik’s the only person Charles has ever trusted enough to let him see Charles go to pieces.  
  
But he can’t fall apart right now.  
  
Not while Erik’s drunk.  Not even if one of Erik’s hands has hooked the back of Charles’s knee, pulling his legs wider apart, dragging Charles’s thigh up his own, until Charles’s leg is curling over his hip.  
  
Erik is absurdly lean.  Like nature was trying to find the most beautiful emblem of efficiency.  Thor’s bigger.  Stronger.  But Charles never feels vulnerable with Thor.  
  
Charles’s fingertips have only just tucked themselves under the waist of Erik’s trousers when Erik’s stomach lurches so hard, Charles thinks he feels an echo of it in his own.  
  
“Erik--”  This time it’s laced with concern.  
  
The only response he gets is the slap of Erik’s palm against the wall as he tries to keep himself standing.  Erik’s pale skin sports a sheen that makes him look almost green.  It’s the only thought Charles’s mind has room for before Erik pushes himself away and stumbles towards the half-bath across from the kitchen.  
  
Charles all but slumps against the wall.  Erik’s drunk.  So drunk he’s sick.  He probably won’t even remember this in the morning.  Charles’s mind fractures along twin paths of hope and fear.  It would be better for everyone if Erik remembers nothing.  
  
He can hear Erik’s stomach sloppily emptying itself, and Charles’s throat closes.  He can barely rake in a stubborn breath as he tries to sort out if he’s taken advantage of Erik’s state-- as he thinks about what he might be doing, were Erik any less obviously drunk.  Gaze flicking towards the couch, Charles thinks he knows _exactly_ what he’d be doing.   It’s too easy to imagine himself across Erik’s lap-- grinding their bodies together at a torturously slow pace, with his forehead trying to burrow into the center of Charles’s chest.  
  
Charles is a horrible person.  He must be.  Without the press of Erik’s body, Charles is free to feel banal things like shame and self-loathing.  He can’t let himself be left alone with Erik, not when Erik’s willing to kiss him.  To touch him and hold him and bruise some measure of absolution into his skin.  
  
One foot is planted in the corridor when Charles hesitates.  He can’t leave the door open.  Can’t leave it unlocked.  Can’t say goodbye and can’t look at Erik, let alone talk to him.    
  
Bitterly grateful for the fact that Erik isn’t calling for him, Charles takes the time to twist the lock of the door knob before softly pulling it shut behind him.  
  
  
By the time Erik drags himself from the bathroom, there’s no one else in his apartment.


End file.
